


Blackfriars Bridge

by Katiehorsie



Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/M, Jem's POV, jessa reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 01:13:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katiehorsie/pseuds/Katiehorsie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*CP2 SPOILERS*</p><p>Jem's POV of his reunion with Tessa on Blackfriars at the end of Clockwork Princess.</p><p>His eyes combed through the crowd on the bridge. Maybe you could say he did it in a hungry way, his gaze greedily drinking in everything as they looked for their prize, or maybe you could say in a nervous way, his eyes flicking back and forth as he waited nervously for his lost love and ex fiancée to appear. He managed to shift from foot to foot while holding himself in the proud, straight way of a Shadowhunter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackfriars Bridge

His eyes combed through the crowd on the bridge. Maybe you could say he did it in a hungry way, his gaze greedily drinking in everything as they looked for their prize, or maybe you could say in a nervous way, his eyes flicking back and forth as he waited nervously for his lost love and ex fiancée to appear. He managed to shift from foot to foot while holding himself in the proud, straight way of a Shadowhunter. Sure, he hadn’t been a normal Nephilim in many years, but he had left the Silent Brothers and now, once again, embraced his humanity. No longer did he remain hidden from the mundanes behind a glamour. Now, he stood proudly for their eyes to see, only the black runes on his skin hidden from view.  
As he stood among the others that hurried about, he finally spotted the girl he was looking for. Her legs curled to her chest on a bench across the road, she looked the same as the year before that and the year before that and the year before that, stretching back to when they first met at the end of the 19th century. The only thing that ever changed were the clothes she wore as the fashion choices of the mundanes morphed with every generation. Watching her, his fears of how she may react to him grew. Last year when he saw her, he was still Brother Zachariah, quietly standing before her in his grey robes. Now, while he was once more James Carstairs, he still wasn’t her Jem. No, he was no longer pale and weak, dying from the drug that kept him alive. He looked as he did before the demon poisoned him. His hair was black, his eyes dark, his skin tanned.  
Tessa wasn’t his Tessa anymore, either. She had grown and matured. She watched as her husband and children aged and died while she stayed the same. One hundred and thirty years had slipped away as she remained alone, wandering from place to place but always appearing on this bridge every year. Only in that and her looks did she not change. Nevertheless, he still had to go to her, and with a deep breath, he did just that. Nimbly dodging through traffic as he made his way across the street, he stopped in front of the bench on which she sat.  
“Tessa?” He said softly. He watched as she registered his voice, realizing it didn’t echo through her head as it had in the past years. He could see the gears turning in her head, and she slowly turned to face him, her eyes widening in surprise.  
“Jem?” She whispered as if speaking too loud would make him disappear. Her eyes drank in the sight before her, not fully able to wrap her head around the fact that it was not Brother Zachariah or her sick, dying Jem that stood in front of her. For the first time, she saw Jem glowing with health in a way she had never seen. “Jem,” she said, his name coming out as more of a breath than a word. Desperate hope flooded her face and voice, taking place of the confusion and shock. “You are—this is permanent? You are not bound to the Silent Brothers anymore?”  
“No,” he replied, his heart pounding in his chest. He was still nervous of how Tessa would act in regards to his reappearance as Jem. “I am not.”  
She leaned forwards, the hope on her face growing. “The cure—you found it?”  
Jem swallowed. He didn’t quite know how to go about this. “I did not find it myself. But—it was found.” His hand absently rose to run through his hair.  
“I saw Magnus in Alicante only a few months ago. We spoke of you. He never said…” She trailed off.  
Jem picked up for her. “He didn’t know. It has been a hard year, a dark year, for Shadowhunters. But out of the blood and the fire, the loss and the sorrow, there have been born some great new changes.” He raised his arms slightly, gesturing to himself with a small smile creeping onto his face. He was still in disbelief with his transformation, and he found himself wanting Tessa to accept him as he now was. “I myself am changed.”  
“How—“  
“I,” he interrupted her, “will tell you the story of it. Another story of Lightwoods and Herondales and Fairchilds.” In all honesty, he didn’t really know if he was ready to reveal the tale, or how he would even go about doing it. “But it will take more than an hour in telling, and you must be cold.” He found himself moving towards her like a moth to a flame. He could never help the way she had drawn him in, and in another time and place, he probably could have raised his hand and touch her shoulder like he found himself wanting to do, but she was a flame. Either she would radiate warmth and light, or she would burn him, and he did not yet know which. He stopped himself and stepped back.  
“I—“ Tessa trailed off, her expression returning to one of shock, but the confusion now absent. For that, Jem was thankful. She opened and closed her mouth once, twice, before she spoke again. “But—after today? Where will you go? To Idris?”  
Jem was caught off guard and baffled as to what to reply. He hadn’t really ever given thought to that. He hadn’t even had the chance to do so. Now, though, the reality of a long future hit him in the face. “I don’t know,” he managed. “I’ve never had a lifetime to plan for before.”  
“Then…to another Institute?”  
Jem couldn’t quite place what he saw on Tessa’s face. Something almost pleading, but he didn’t know what for. Did she want him to go? But he wanted to stay with her. He took a breath and answered, trying to hide his longing for her and his fear of her rejection from his voice. “I do not think I will go to Idris, or to an Institute anywhere. I don’t know how to live in a world as a Shadowhunter without Will.” Will, he thought. Without Will, all he had was Tessa. “I don’t think I even want to. I am still a parabatai, but my other half is gone. If I were to go to some Institute and ask them to take me in, I would never forget that. I would never feel whole.” He stopped and closed his eyes. Just how would he survive life without Will?  
“Then what—“  
He opened his eyes to met hers. She looked at him with understanding, but of course she would. She lost him, too. They were both living in a world without Will, and both were suffering because of it. That’s why Jem not only wanted but needed Tessa, and he hoped she would at the very least want him around. “That depends on you.” He threw his cards down on the table with that statement. He wouldn’t hide the fact that he needed her.  
“On me?” She half whimpered. He thought he glimpsed the same trepidation and hesitancy he himself felt in her. Time had changed them both, and only time would tell if they could again come together.  
“I—“ He broke away from her gaze to look at his hands, the knuckles white from his grip on the concrete. “For a hundred and thirty years every hour of my life has been scheduled.” He paused. “I thought often of what I would do if I were free, if there were ever a cure found. I thought I would bold immediately, like a bird released from a cage.” He looked out over the river that had remained the same, even as the world had changed so very much. “I had not imagined I would emerge and find the world so changed, so desperate. Subsumed in fire and blood. I wished to survive it, but for only one reason. I wished…” He trailed off. He didn’t know what he was trying to say, or how to say it.  
“What did you wish for?” Tessa urged him forwards, curious to know what he had to say, but he didn’t reply. Instead, he reached over to touch the pearl bracelet on her wrist, careful not to touch her skin.  
“This is your thirtieth anniversary bracelet,” he said. “You still wear it.”  
He saw her throat move up and down as she swallowed. “Yes.”  
“Since Will, have you never loved anyone else?”  
She half smiled, and he greedily drank in the sight. “Don’t you know the answer to that?”  
He smiled slightly in return. “I don’t mean the way you love your children, or the way you love your friends. Tessa, you know what I’m asking.”  
“I don’t,” she said. “I think I need you to tell me.”  
Here he was, asking Tessa an important question, but she was playing dumb and making him want to laugh and roll his eyes. “We were once going to be married. And I have loved you all this time—a century and a half. And I know that you loved Will.” He took a breath. “I saw you together over the years. And I know that that love was so great that it must have made other loves, even the one we had when we were both so young, seem small and unimportant.” Another breath. “You had a whole lifetime of love with him, Tessa.” Another breath. “So many years. Children. Memories I cannot hope to—“ He stopped in his tracks. Why was he asking this? He knew their love didn’t compare to what she had with Will. While it was all he had to cling to, he just knew she didn’t feel that way. “No,” he yanked his hand away from her. “I can’t do it. I was a fool to think—“ He stopped himself. “Tessa, forgive me.” He swung around, diving into the throng of people unaware of what had just transpired.  
He shoved his way through the crowd, desperate to melt away. He couldn’t ask that of Tessa, and he knew she would demand to know what he was saying if he stayed. She had her own life now, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, time had faded their bond. Well, for her, at least. She had an entire life of family and friends and love. Brother Zachariah hadn’t even really been Jem. He went all that time alone, in silence. Tessa had known such great things, and he knew nothing of that magic. He found his way to the slippery stairs, surging forwards down them, not caring if he were to slip and fall. After all, he didn’t really have a place in this world. His parabatai was dead; his beloved had moved on. He was alone.  
He hadn’t heard Tessa approach him, but he found himself yanked around to face her. “What,” she demanded, gasping for breath. “What were you trying to ask me, Jem?”  
His eyes widened in surprise. He was sure she wouldn’t have followed him, but here she was. “Tessa—you followed me?” He wasn’t sure what he intended those words to be, but it seemed to be a question.  
“Of course I followed you.” She seemed confused as to why he had run. “You ran off in the middle of a sentence!” And slightly annoyed he hadn’t finished what he was saying…  
He didn’t really know what to say now. She followed him. He had convinced himself she wouldn’t, and now he was faced with saying what he feared to voice. “It wasn’t a very good sentence,” he said, lamely. He glanced down before meeting her gaze with a smile on his face. “I never was the one who was good with words. If I had my violin, I would be able to play you what I wanted to say.”  
“Just try.” She urged.  
“I don’t—“ He really had no idea what to say. “I’m nor sure I can. I had six or seven speeches prepared, and I was running through all of them, I think.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, frowning slightly. He really had no idea what he was trying to say or do anymore.  
To his surprise, Tessa reached out and took his wrists in her warm hands. “Well, I am good with words,” she said confidently. “So let me ask you, then.”  
He removed his hands from his pockets, letting her fully wrap her fingers around them. As he looked down at her, into her eyes, he realized yet again how much he needed her.  
“You asked me if I have loved anyone but Will,” she started. “And the answer is yes. I have loved you. I always have, and I always will.” His breath caught in his throat as the words he so longed and feared he would never hear again rolled off her tongue. His heart thudded in his chest, and she continued. “They say you cannot love two people equally at once, and perhaps for others that is so.” Her words were so confident, and he clung to them. “But you and Will—you are not like two ordinary people, two people who might have been jealous of each other, or who would have imagined my love for one of them diminished by my love of the other. You merged your souls when you were both children. I could not have loved Will so much if I had not loved you as well.” She smiled at him. “And I could not love you as I do if I had not loved Will as I did.”  
She gently squeezed his wrists, seeming to love the little bit of contact as much as he did, before releasing them. She reached into the collar of her shirt and pulled forth the jade pendant he had given her so long ago. “You remember, that you left it with me?” She asked. “I’ve never taken it off.”  
How could he forget the pendant? He closed his eyes. “All these years,” he whispered, his heart lifting as it was freed from all his worries, doubts, and fears. “All these years, you wore it?” He breathed out. “I never knew.”  
“It seemed that it would only have been a burden on you, when you were a Silent Brother. I feared that you might think that my wearing it meant I had some sort of expectation of you. An expectation you could not fulfill.”  
He stayed silent for a long time. He wasn’t like Tessa or Will that could spin perfect words together in seconds. He had to carefully think every word out, figure out what it was he was really trying to say. Seeing Tessa begin to shift uneasily in his silence, he finally spoke. “To be a Silent Brother is to see everything and nothing all at once.” His words were slow and careful. He was determined to explain without butchering the response. “I could see the great map of life, spread out before me. I could see the curtains of the world. And human life began to seem a sort of passion play, acted at a distance. When they took the runes from me, when the mantle of the Brotherhood was removed, it was as if I had awoken from a long dream, or as if a shield of glass around me had shattered. I felt everything, all at once, rushing in upon me. All the humanity the Brotherhood’s spells had taken from me. That I had so much humanity to return to me…” He trailed off and met her eyes. “That is because of you. If I had not had you, Tessa, if I had not had these yearly meetings as my anchor and my guide, I do not know if I could have come back.” In this, he was confident. She was the siren that pulled him in, that lead him back to himself and brought him back home to her, for she was now the center of his world. He had nothing but her, and he was sure that was all he needed—all that kept him from falling.  
“But you have,” she whispered, love for him clear in her eyes. “And it is a miracle. And you remember what I once told you about miracles.”  
“’One does not question miracles, or complain that they are not constructed perfectly to one’s liking,’” he quoted, remembering the words with a smile on his face. “I suppose that is true. I wish that I could have come back to you earlier. I wish I were the same boy I was when you loved me, once.” He couldn’t help but voice the doubts that kept creeping their way back into his mind. “I fear that the years have changed me into someone else.” Someone, perhaps, that you cannot love.  
She studied his face. He could see the ghost of their past on her face as he was sure she could see on his own. “The years have changed me, too,” she admitted. “I have been a mother and a grandmother, and I have seen those I love die, and seen others be born. You speak of the currents of the world. I have seen them too. If I were still the same girl I was when you knew me first, I would not have been able to speak my heart as freely to you as I just have. I would have not been able to ask you what I am about to ask you now.”  
Hope again came to him. Maybe they had both changed, and maybe they were now different people, but maybe, just maybe, who they now were could still love the other. He raised his hand, giving in to his urge to reach out and touch her, to assure himself that she was really standing there in front of him, and tenderly cupped her cheek. “And what is that?”  
“Come with me. Stay with me. Be with me. See everything with me,” she said, gazing up into his eyes, and he smiled, it now being his turn to urge her on. She returned his smile and continued on. “I have traveled the world and seen so much, but there is so much more, and no one I would rather see it with than you. I would go anywhere and everywhere with you, Jem Carstairs.”  
His thumb slid along her cheekbone in a gentle caress. His beautiful, beautiful Tessa, saying exactly what he had so desperately needed to hear. The light in his life would let him bask in it. He wouldn’t be shunned away into darkness as he had so feared. “It seems unreal. I have loved you for so long. How can this be true?”  
“It is one of the greatest truths of my life,” she said, her voice sincere. “Will you come with me? For I cannot wait to share the world with you, Jem. There is so much to see.”  
He wasn’t quite sure what happened next, but he was sure that Tessa wound up in his arms, and he held her as he had been longing to for so long. He buried his face in her silky locks, breathing in the familiar smell that was so Tessa. “Yes, of course, yes,” he murmered, pulling away from her hair to hesitantly press his lips to her.  
“Bie zhao ji,” she whispered, kissing his cheek, the corner of his mouth, before finally finding his lips. Relieved that everything was going to work out, that they would make it work out, Jem returned the kiss, cradling her body in his arms, keeping her close and basking in her warmth. He kissed her with a passion as strong as a dying man’s desperate grip on life, refusing to let go or ease up, and he clung to her as a drowning man grasped a raft to keep afloat, holding on to their saving salvation, because that is what she was. She was his guide, his anchor, all that held him to this world and to his humanity. At last, the wheel had come full circle, and the separated lovers recovered the lost love of a time so long ago.


End file.
